The rejection by the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission of Israel’s request to investigate the treatment of the Jews in Arab lands and its insistence that the investigation be confined exclusively to alleged violations of Arab rights in Israeli administered territories was scored today as a “flagrant double standard” by Jacob Stein of Great Neck, N.Y., President of the United Synagogue of America, congregational arm of the Conservative movement. Mr. Stein urged that the UN Rights Commission reconsider the just request from Israel to undertake an on the spot study of the treatment of the Jews in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt who, he charged, “are being held as hostages and deprived of all elementary human rights.”
A six-man United Nations team composed of representatives of India, Yugoslavia, Senegal, Austria, Tanzania and Peru, was named last year to conduct the investigation. Mr. Stein noted that in view of the repeated refusal by UN Secretary General U Thant to authorize a simultaneous investigation of the plight of the Jews in Arab lands, Israel has barred the UN Committee from operating in its administered territories. The UN group thereupon heard testimony in the Arab capitals of Cairo, Damascus, Amman and Beirut. Mr. Stein asserted that “the report released Feb. 17 by the UN Committee of an investigation conducted inside lands at war with Israel will be in question as a travesty of impartial judgment reflecting the double standard policy practiced by the United Nations toward Israel by its heavily weighted anti-Israel membership.”
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